Dataset Information

How Are School Menus Evaluated in Different Countries? A Systematic Review.

ABSTRACT: School meals should focus on quality of life issues, particularly on reducing food shortages, overweight, obesity and its consequences. As an essential tool for quality assurance, creating the menu is an activity of great complexity and requires multidisciplinary knowledge. This activity covers the observation of countless aspects of quality, highlighting nutritional, sensory, cultural, hygienic, and sanitary issues, among others. This study aims to identify and analyze instruments and methods to evaluate school menus in different countries. The authors developed specific search strategies for Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, Pubmed, Lilacs, ProQuest Global, and Google Scholar. The included studies' methodological quality was assessed using the statistical analysis and meta-analysis review tool (MASTARI). A total of 16 cross-sectional studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. Brazil and Spain were the countries that presented the highest number of studies (n = 5; 31.25% for each). The majority of the studies have a qualitative approach (n = 12, 75%), and only 25% (n = 4) of the studies present quantitative assessment methods to evaluate school menus. No school menu assessment tools were found to assess all aspects of menu planning. The results show a lack of a methodology or of instruments for evaluating the menus offered for school meals that can contribute to better dietary care offered to students.

SUBMITTER: Cupertino AF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7915021 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

How Are School Menus Evaluated in Different Countries? A Systematic Review.

Cupertino Alessandra Fabrino AF Maynard Dayanne da Costa DDC Queiroz Fabiana Lopes Nalon de FLN Zandonadi Renata Puppin RP Ginani Verônica Cortez VC Raposo António A Saraiva Ariana A Botelho Raquel Braz Assunção RBA

Foods (Basel, Switzerland) 20210209 2

School meals should focus on quality of life issues, particularly on reducing food shortages, overweight, obesity and its consequences. As an essential tool for quality assurance, creating the menu is an activity of great complexity and requires multidisciplinary knowledge. This activity covers the observation of countless aspects of quality, highlighting nutritional, sensory, cultural, hygienic, and sanitary issues, among others. This study aims to identify and analyze instruments and methods t ...[more]

PMID: 33572214

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundThe World Bank has reported that global smoking rates declined from 2000 to 2012, with the only exception found in males in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is considered to be in stage one of the tobacco epidemic continuum. To address this problem, school-based programs for smoking prevention are considered cost-effective and promising. Since tobacco prevention programs are influenced by social competence or customs of each country, tobacco prevention programs that have success in Western countries are not always effective in African countries. Therefore, the current study systematically reviewed relevant literature to examine the effects of these types of programs in African countries.MethodOnline bibliographic databases and a hand search were used. We included the studies that examined the impact of school-based programs on preventing tobacco use in Africa from 2000 to 2016.ResultsSix articles were selected. Four were conducted in South Africa and two were performed in Nigeria. Four programs were systematically incorporated into annual curriculums, targeting 8th to 9th graders, while the other two were temporary programs. All programs were based on the hypothesis that providing knowledge and/or social skills against smoking would be helpful. All studies utilized smoking or polydrug use rates to compare outcomes before/after intervention. There were no significant differences between intervention and control groups in three studies, with the other three demonstrating only partial effectiveness. Additionally, three studies also examined change of knowledge/attitudes towards smoking as an outcome. Two of these showed significant differences between groups.ConclusionAll RCTs studies showed no significant change of smoking-rate by the intervention. The effectiveness of intervention was observed only in some sub-group. The cohort studies showed school-based interventions may be effective in improving knowledge and attitudes about smoking. However, they reported no significant change of smoking-rate by the intervention.

Project description:IntroductionSince the introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is a manageable chronic disease. However, school-age children (4-18 years) living with HIV could still experience problems with functioning at school, due to the impact of the virus itself, medication, comorbidities and social stigma. School functioning covers academic achievement, school attendance, and social relationships and is of utmost importance to optimize normal participation.MethodsTo gain insight in school functioning problems of perinatally HIV-infected children, we performed a systematic review of the literature in multiple databases from January 1997 up to February 2019. Studies were included if they described outcomes of school functioning of school-age children perinatally infected with HIV, in high-income countries. Meta-analyses were performed for sufficiently comparable studies.Results and discussionResults from 32 studies show that HIV-infected children experience more problems in various areas of school functioning in comparison with national norms, matched healthy controls, siblings and HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children. The most pronounced differences concerned the usage of special educational services, general learning problems, and mathematics and reading performance scores. Comparisons with both national norms and siblings/HEU children show that the differences between HIV-infected children and siblings/HEU children were less pronounced. Moreover, siblings/HEU children also reported significantly worse outcomes compared to national norms. This suggests that problems in school functioning cannot be solely attributed to the HIV-infection, but that multiple socio-economic and cultural factors may play a role herein.ConclusionPerinatally HIV-infected children seem vulnerable to problems in various areas of school functioning. Therefore, monitoring of school functioning should be an important aspect in the care for these children. A family-focused approach with special attention to a child's socio-environmental context and additional attention for siblings and HEU children, is therefore recommended.

Project description:ObjectivesSchool-based sex education is a cornerstone of HIV prevention for adolescents who continue to bear a disproportionally high HIV burden globally. We systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed the existing evidence for school-based sex education interventions in low- and middle-income countries to determine the efficacy of these interventions in changing HIV-related knowledge and risk behaviors.MethodsWe searched five electronic databases, PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo, CINAHL, and Sociological Abstracts, for eligible articles. We also conducted hand-searching of key journals and secondary reference searching of included articles to identify potential studies. Intervention effects were synthesized through random effects meta-analysis for five outcomes: HIV knowledge, self-efficacy, sexual debut, condom use, and number of sexual partners.ResultsOf 6191 unique citations initially identified, 64 studies in 63 articles were included in the review. Nine interventions either focused exclusively on abstinence (abstinence-only) or emphasized abstinence (abstinence-plus), whereas the remaining 55 interventions provided comprehensive sex education. Thirty-three studies were able to be meta-analyzed across five HIV-related outcomes. Results from meta-analysis demonstrate that school-based sex education is an effective strategy for reducing HIV-related risk. Students who received school-based sex education interventions had significantly greater HIV knowledge (Hedges g = 0.63, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.49-0.78, p<0.001), self-efficacy related to refusing sex or condom use (Hedges g = 0.25, 95% CI: 0.14-0.36, p<0.001), condom use (OR = 1.34, 95% CI: 1.18-1.52, p<0.001), fewer sexual partners (OR = 0.75, 95% CI:0.67-0.84, p<0.001) and less initiation of first sex during follow-up (OR = 0.66, 95% CI: 0.54-0.83, p<0.001).ConclusionsThe paucity of abstinence-only or abstinence-plus interventions identified during the review made comparisons between the predominant comprehensive and less common abstinence-focused programs difficult. Comprehensive school-based sex education interventions adapted from effective programs and those involving a range of school-based and community-based components had the largest impact on changing HIV-related behaviors.

Dataset Information

How Are School Menus Evaluated in Different Countries? A Systematic Review.

Publications

How Are School Menus Evaluated in Different Countries? A Systematic Review.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets